Hundreds of abortion opponents from across Southern California are gearing up for a protest this weekend at Planned Parenthood offices across the region in response to a series of videos recently released by an anti-abortion group.

The protests are part of a National Day of Protest from 9 to 11 a.m. Saturday at Planned Parenthood clinics in 48 states and in Washington, D.C. In California, protests are planned in 58 cities including Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Long Beach, Pomona, Pasadena, Whittier, Thousand Oaks, and Lawndale, according to the website www.protestpp.com.

Recently released hidden-camera videos by the Irvine-based Center for Medical Progress, an anti-abortion organization, spurred controversy over the use of tissue from aborted fetuses for medical research. The videos, which recorded Planned Parenthood physicians discussing procedures for extracting fetal organ tissue, triggered national outrage by abortion opponents and led to political debate over whether federal funding for the reproductive health nonprofit should be cut.

“Obviously, when the videos came out, I was completely shocked,” said Claire Miller, 19, of Torrance, who organized Saturday’s protest at the Planned Parenthood office in Lawndale. “They’re performing illegal partial-birth abortions and they’ve been profiting off the body parts of these dead children.”

In the past three weeks, Miller said she has reached out to local churches, various anti-abortion advocacy groups, and family and friends to join in the Lawndale protest.

“I must have reached out to 2,000 people,” said Miller, a former member of the Riverside-based Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust.

She said she now works independently to rally support for the anti-abortion cause.

Officials at Planned Parenthood didn’t respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, posted a videotaped statement on Planned Parenthood’s website after the release of the videos. She said the videos were “heavily edited to make outrageous claims about programs that help women donate fetal tissue for medical research.

“I want to be really clear: The allegation that Planned Parenthood profits, in any way, from tissue donation is not true,” Richards said. “Our donation programs, like any high quality health care providers, follow all laws and ethical guidelines.”

Still, some who saw the videos say they were shocked by Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue-harvesting procedures.

“Each community with a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic or satellite office needs to take action against the killing of babies and the trafficking of their body parts,” said Nicholas Ewell, who is participating in a protest in Pomona on Saturday. “Concerned local citizens from Pomona and the surrounding communities will be sending the message that these criminal acts will not be tolerated.”

Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, or NAF, in Washington, said the Center for Medical Progress is a sham organization operated by three anti-abortion extremists who established a fraudulent biomedical company called Biomax to infiltrate NAF and Planned Parenthood meetings, where they shot the clandestine videos.

The videos were then heavily edited and disseminated publicly to “demonize abortion providers,” she said.

It was a highly sophisticated scheme, said Saporta, in which the perpetrators created fake IDs, hired actors to play the role of Biomax company representatives, and even filed fraudulent documents with the IRS.

The videos resulted in a windfall of death threats at NAF, Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers nationwide, and prompted NAF to file a complaint and request a criminal investigation from the U.S. Department of Justice, Saporta said.

“We’re now reporting (death threats) on almost a daily basis as we’re uncovering additional threats,” Saporta said. “It is the most concerning escalation of threats against abortion providers in my 20 years with NAF.”

NAF also sought, and was granted, a temporary restraining order against the Center for Medical Progress in federal court in San Francisco. The order bars the center from releasing any additional videos, Saporta said.

Center CEO David Daleiden did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Wednesday.

Fetal tissue is a precious resource in medical research to help find cures and treatments for various diseases, and Nobel Prize winners and other scientists have employed fetal tissue research to yield vaccines for chicken pox, rubella and polio, according to an article published on Aug. 12 in The New England Journal of Medicine.

“Currently, embryonic stem cells don’t create organs, so when you need to understand how organs develop, or how stem cells behave in organs, human fetal tissue is very important,” said Lisa Lapin, spokeswoman for Stanford University, home of the Stanford University School of Medicine, the oldest medical school in the western United States.

Fetal tissue has also been key for studying the biology and pathology of HIV and other infections, Lapin said in an email.

“This is because virus that is grown in cultures that don’t include fetal tissue rapidly lose their ability to infect new tissue,” Lapin said.

Joe Nelson is an award-winning investigative reporter who has worked for The Sun since November 1999. He started as a crime reporter and went on to cover a variety of beats including courts and the cities of Colton, Highland and Grand Terrace. He has covered San Bernardino County since 2009. Nelson is a graduate of California State University Fullerton. In 2014, he completed a fellowship at Loyola Law School's Journalist Law School program.

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